Jin “opened” his eyes.

  Or at least, that was what he thought he did.

  For a few moments, his mind was a complete mess. Scattered thoughts, overlapping memories, the uncomfortable sensation of having been thrown against an invisible wall. It took him a while to put everything in order… though, to be honest, that didn’t help at all.

  Because when he finally managed to focus on his surroundings, he saw nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  Everything was black.

  An absolute blackness—without depth, without light, without up or down.

  Jin frowned.

  “What the hell is going on…?” he muttered, his voice echoing strangely in the void.

  A second later, a terrible idea crossed his mind.

  “Don’t tell me I died again…” he whispered in disbelief. “Nooo, I’d finally reincarnated into a cultivation world!”

  He stayed there, floating in the darkness, dramatizing the situation for a few seconds longer than necessary, as if the heavens themselves might feel guilty about it.

  Then he sighed.

  “Alright… calm down,” he told himself. “If this is the afterlife, it’s ugly as hell. They could’ve decorated it better. A couple of clouds, a tea table, something…”

  The silence offered no response.

  Jin tried to “look” around again, though he wasn’t entirely sure how he was looking if he couldn’t feel his body. There was no cold, no heat, no pain. Nor did he feel the wound that, by all laws of logic, should have killed him.

  That was when he decided to use the only thing he truly had left: his brain.

  He recalled all those cliché novels he had read. Floating souls. Mental spaces. Intermediate states between life and death. Suspended consciousness. Absurd divine trials.

  Slowly, a hypothesis began to form in his “mind.”

  “Mmm…” he murmured. “It seems like… I’m not dead.”

  The idea didn’t completely reassure him, but at least it stopped him from complaining about the afterlife’s interior design.

  For now.

  Jin narrowed his eyes… or at least, he did the mental equivalent of that.

  If his hypothesis was correct, then this place didn’t operate under normal physical rules. No body. No ground. No direction. So, in theory…

  “If this is something mental,” he thought, “then I should be able to move using just intention.”

  He focused.

  Not on moving a foot or an arm—he couldn’t feel either—but on the idea of moving forward itself, on the sensation of displacement.

  And then it happened.

  The “space” responded.

  Jin felt his consciousness slide forward, as if he were beginning to float through the black abyss. There was no resistance, no weight. Just pure movement.

  His eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Oh…” he murmured. “It works.”

  He tried again, this time with more confidence. He accelerated. Turned. Went up, down… or at least, that’s what he thought, because the concept of direction here was highly questionable.

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  Excitement took over.

  “Ha!” he thought, increasingly energized. “Look at that! Mental flight unlocked!”

  He began racing through the void at full speed, cutting through nothingness like an invisible bolt of lightning. Faster. Freer. More confident.

  Until suddenly—

  A sharp pain exploded in his “mind.”

  “Agh!” he complained instantly. “What the hell!? Who’s trying to pry open my brain!?”

  The sensation was strange, as if someone were pressing directly on his consciousness with invisible fingers. It wasn’t physical pain, but it was intense enough to force him to stop dead.

  Jin took a deep breath—or simulated doing so.

  “Alright, alright… I get it. No playing flying immortal,” he grumbled.

  He calmed down, letting his mind stabilize, allowing the pressure to slowly fade.

  That was when he felt it.

  Something.

  A vague presence—distant, but undeniable. He couldn’t see it or hear it, yet he perceived it clearly, as if an invisible string had been pulled taut within the abyss.

  Something… was calling him.

  Jin frowned.

  “I don’t like this,” he thought. “This sounds dangerously like a ‘major event.’”

  Out of pure instinct, he tried to resist, but before he could do anything, his consciousness began to move.

  Not because he chose to.

  But because it was being pulled.

  The black abyss seemed to distort around him as Jin was dragged toward that unknown presence, without even giving him time to complain properly.

  Jin advanced… or was advanced.

  He didn’t know how to describe it.

  Ahead of him, in the middle of the abyss, there was something different. It wasn’t light, nor shape, nor color—and yet… the darkness there was darker. Dense. Thick. As if even nothingness itself refused to exist properly in that spot.

  It made no sense.

  And precisely because of that, it set his nerves on edge.

  “Great…” he thought dryly. “Premium darkness. That’s never a good sign.”

  As he drew closer, an uncomfortable feeling washed over him. It wasn’t pure fear, but a visceral intuition—that inner voice screaming that something bad would happen if he kept going.

  That was when he heard it.

  Very far away.

  So far that it seemed to come from another space, another plane.

  Voices.

  “W-will this young man… survive?”

  The voice was old. Weary.

  Then others followed—smaller, trembling, overlapping one another.

  “Will big brother recover, Grandpa Pi…?”

  “He will… right?”

  They were children. Nervous. Afraid.

  Jin’s heart lurched.

  The voices continued, now a little clearer.

  “The way he killed that demon…” said another voice, firmer. “Without a doubt, a hero like him won’t die, young ones.”

  Each word echoed through the void.

  And with every sentence, Jin felt something change.

  The force pulling him toward that deep darkness began to weaken. As if the voices were anchoring him. As if they were pulling him in the opposite direction.

  The abyss began to tremble.

  Invisible cracks formed in nothingness itself, and the dark space started to collapse, fracturing like a shattered mirror.

  “Ah…” Jin murmured as his mind cleared. “So that’s what this was…”

  The pull vanished completely.

  In its place, a heavy, dense, familiar sensation slowly returned—the weight of a body, the limits of flesh, the distant echo of pain.

  The darkness shattered.

  And Jin felt his consciousness being pushed back, as if he were falling from a great height.

  The world returned.

  Blurry colors.

  Muffled sounds.

  An uncomfortable pressure in his chest.

  Jin regained consciousness and slowly sat up.

  First, he opened his eyes… and the world was a blurred smear of light and shadow. An unfamiliar ceiling stretched above him—simple, without flashy decorations, but definitely not the one from his hut in the sect.

  A strange scent filled his nose.

  Sweet.

  Bitter.

  With a herbal undertone that felt vaguely familiar.

  “…What the hell…?” he murmured, his voice dry.

  Just moments ago, he’d been floating in a black abyss, hearing distant voices… and now he was here, awake in a place he didn’t recognize at all.

  With a restrained groan, Jin sat up in bed. The movement sent a sharp wave of pain through his entire body, from shoulders to legs, as if every muscle were protesting at once.

  “Tch…”

  Once seated, he took a deep breath and began to observe his surroundings.

  It was some kind of room.

  Simple, but clean and orderly. A nearby table was covered with ceramic and glass jars—some open, others sealed—all labeled with handwritten tags. In the corners and by the window grew several medicinal plants, some hanging in bundles, others carefully laid out to dry.

  A healing room.

  Or something very close to it.

  Sensing no immediate danger, Jin turned his attention to himself.

  He looked down… and fell silent.

  “…What the hell…?”

  He was wrapped in bandages. Arms, torso, shoulders… even parts of his legs. If someone saw him right now, they could easily mistake him for a poorly wrapped mummy.

  Carefully, he brought a trembling hand to his abdomen.

  There.

  Right there.

  The place where he remembered—clearly—that there should have been a gaping, bloody hole.

  His fingers touched the area… and froze.

  There was pain.

  There was sensation.

  But there was also flesh.

  No emptiness.

  No hole.

  Jin pressed gently, holding his breath.

  “…This… makes no sense.”

  The wound that should have killed him was there… closed. Damaged, yes, but present. As if his body had decided to ignore logic altogether.

  Jin leaned back against the bed, his brow deeply furrowed.

  “Definitely…” he murmured, “I’m not dead.”

  “But someone is going to have to explain to me how the hell I’m still alive.”